


Associate Benefits (Part One of Five)

by mresundance



Series: Associate Benefits (Libs AU) [1]
Category: AU - Fandom, Bandom, The Libertines
Genre: AU, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-06
Updated: 2010-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-11 13:23:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mresundance/pseuds/mresundance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Peter and Carl work retail and ponder why they keep messing around with each other when they are clearly interested in a pair of women. Clearly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Associate Benefits (Part One of Five)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Don't know 'em. Dirty lies of a bored mind.

**Lunch Break**  
Sex was best and most likely in the backstock.

Folded carpenter jeans flopped onto the floor from the metal shelves. Peter braced himself against the shelves as Carl held his hips and gave him a boisterous hammering. Usually Pete and Carl were twistier and bendier than this, managing once to have sex coiled up on a shelf behind the Laura Ashley clusterpuff kingsized pillows ("Hope that doesn't leave a stain," Peter had said afterwards). Today they only had nine minutes of lunch left rather than the usual half hour to gleefully pillage each other, mostly because Carl had stumbled upon a customer who had wanted him to climb a ladder to the very top shelf in table linens and fetch _that_ placemat, no, no, not that one, _that_ one; well, maybe not that one, no, it doesn't have right color red, try _that_ one . . .

"You're late!" Peter had cried when Carl blustered up the stairs from the dock to where Peter was hiding - rather craftily, he thought - under a rail of unmarked clearance lingerie.

"What about this one?" Peter had said as he smoothed a gauzy black thing over his body and shaken his hips. Carl had sighed in exasperation, then thrown Peter against the shelf and de-trousered him before he could say, "how's your father".

"Spread 'em," Carl had grabbed Peter's hips. Peter had gone cross-eyed with sexual glee for a minute before complying. Carl had thrown himself into Peter and the two of them had muttered a "fuck" that bespoke mingled jabs of pain and pleasure.

"Carl," he squeaked and a drop of sweat rolled off the tip of his nose. Carl lunged and grabbed the skin between Peter's neck and shoulder with his teeth, making Peter moan and shudder.

It was just getting good, really good, hip rollicking and spine bending sweating and cursing Jesus Christ good, when a bright cheery voice ascended the stairs.

"Oh, I bet there's some up here . . ."

The voice of Annalisa, supervisor of the Junior's department, who notoriously flirted with Carl and with whom Carl notoriously flirted back. The rumor mill had them nailing each other in the Junior's dressing rooms last month, during the height of the BOGO sale.

Carl and Peter froze and waited to be discovered. Annalisa hummed and wafted around, just missing them but still irritatingly close. Carl wondered if his arse looked okay by the dreary backstock light, and Peter wondered if the Queen really bought her bloomers from Harrod's or just said she did and really bought department store knock offs.

"Coooold," Peter hissed. "M'bits're coooold."

Carl clamped a hand over Peter's mouth, which Peter then moved and used to give himself a hand job.

"Cut it out!" Carl hissed.

"Guess it's not here!" Annalisa chirped and they listened to her footsteps recede down the stairs.

"Shit," Carl swore as he pulled himself off Peter. Peter scowled.

Tucking themselves away, straightening their clothes, combing snarled hair with fingers and checking watches to see how much time they had left, Peter asked: "You didn't shag her, did you?"

"What?"

"You didn't shag her, I said."

"Why? Would you be jealous?" Carl shot back. Who was he, the fucking Gestapo? He was sullen and sulky about the aborted lunch sexcapade, which was pretty much the high point of his day. Unless he was working in the shoes department and Peter tried to weasel by while he was on the intercom.

"No. Just curious. She's quiet lovely. Not as lovely as Kate, mind, but."

"No one's as lovely as Kate to you."

"Ooooh, now, are _you_ jealous?"

Carl rolled his eyes and snorted.

Peter had looked at Carl as they trudged down the stairs to the dock together; out the swinging doors into the retail world of shining tiled floors, bland carpets and music and packed clothing racks; back behind Customer Service to the bland white breakroom, with the soda and snack machines that hummed and glowed listlessly. As they clocked back in from lunch, Peter thought Carl smelled lovely. Like sweat and clean laundry.

 

**Actually Working**  
Carl was staring at a bright blue piece of floss with floppy green . . . _fringe_ . . . stapled to it and wondering how it constituted panties, much less how girls got into it, when Annalisa came up and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hello stranger," she practically purred and if he wasn't so involved in the Mystery of the Panties he might've felt himself losing some room in his trousers. "Doing some shopping?"

He muttered something about being told to sort things and make them look nice and tried to not look at her as he knew he was turning red.

Annalisa laughed.

"Oh dear. Here, let me help you. I have dressing rooms to clear and I dread it. Teenager girls are monsters. Piles of clothes on the floor up to my knees. Again."

She started flinging and sorting panties and Carl was trying not to regress to being twelve and jiggy dancing while shouting: "Annalisa is helping me sort panties! Annalisa is helping me sort panties!"

Annalisa gave a pair of panties – some kind of grey mosquito netting with shiny pink hearts and bows – a strange look.

"How do these things work?"

Carl was tempted to suggest they find out via a demonstration, but then, knowing Annalisa, she would suggest he try a pair or two on. And the fact that Loss Prevention might pass a brick knowing associates were trying on panties.

Annalisa sighed, an exasperated sound, and put a pair of panties on Carl's head.

"I think that works," she said.

"It is my color, right?" he asked after a minute.

"Oh, absolutely. It's stunning. The minty green and the fuschia pink . . . or maybe orange . . ."  


*

  
Everyone thought Kate was a bitch. Ace supervisor, but just . . . demanding The rumor mill credited her with throwing a huge fit when someone put a garment backwards on a hanger. Everyone but Peter, who was busy trying to find her to help him. He needed someone to remind him where Petites was.

She was giving him the pursed lips and raised brow look.

"Again?"

"I don't work in Misses all that much . . ." he jittered. How did she make him nervous like that? Like he was going to piddle his pants. It was thrilling and embarrassing. What he really wanted to say was:

My lady, won't you join me for sexual cavortions the dressing room? Perhaps the backstock, 'round the corner where the Misses mingles with Men's (winkity wink).

Or maybe dinner?

Or lunch?

Or a nice little house with a picket fence, two and a half tottering children with golden hair just like yours, darling, and a dog. Or something?

She extended an ivory arm and pointed. Peter thought his heart would explode from swoon.

"Petites is over there," she sighed.

But he could've sworn he saw the glimmer of a smile on her lips as he trundled off.

 

**Bathroom Philosophy (A Fifth Fifteen Minute Break)**  
But why was he fucking Peter? _Why?_

Aside from the obvious. You know. Purely hedonistic sexual pleasure. Carl had holed himself up in the handicapped stall of the men's bathroom for a fifteen minute break. He was smoking and pondering the Big Important Things in his life. First it was what to eat for dinner tonight (~~spaghetti~~ noodles with butter and ~~beer~~ whisky); then it was what to watch on telly (~~Little Britain~~ Doctor Who marathon on BBC2); now it was why he wanted to do dirty things with Anna but was doing them with Peter instead.

This is the part where he thinks he isn't queer or anything. Not that being queer is bad at all. Gary and Stan at customer service flamed and blazed and it wasn't that they were queer and fabulous that made them nauseating, but how they were ever so goddamn cheerful, even after being screamed at by an unstable little old lady (she had smelled of liquor to Carl). It wasn't like Carl avoided sex with men either, but that was rutting. Fucking and having some good sweaty fun, after which everyone went their separate ways. Because let's face it, guys got some things that women didn't always get right off and it was simple and came with no strings. No cuddling and spooning and gushing over each other. Grunting maybe, but no "Oh, I'll love you forever" or "I adore you"s. Besides, Peter wasn't the least bit attractive. Carl never had any flustered daydreams about the rat's nest that was Peter's hair, or his crooked teeth, or the ever-winking eyes. Peter did make him laugh until he nearly threw up though, which counted for something, he supposed.

"It's just too much!" Peter exploded into the bathroom and Carl stiffened in his stall, hoping he wouldn't find him back here. He watched Peter's converse shoes wobble and weave their way, back, back, maybe to the sink, yes, no, fuck.

Peter banged on the stall.

"Rubbish!" he declared. "Whoever you are, you're in my stall!"

Carl blew smoke. "Fuck off. I was here first!"

"Carl!" Peter sounded surprised. There was a pause.

"Well, we're both mates here. There's room for both of us in there."

"Fine," Carl snorted smoke and threw the fag end in the toilet and flushed. Peter scrambled under the stall and scooted next to Carl. Peter lit up a new fag and they shared it in silence, listening to the footfalls of customers coming and going. One, with a squealy, pinched voice, muttered, "Oh, someone is smoking! Disgusting!"

Pete and Carl giggled.

"It's too much, really," Peter said at length through a cloud of smoke.

"What?" asked Carl.

"Well, I'm trying to sort out why I'm fucking you when I want to marry Kate."

"You always want to marry Kate."

"Yes, well."

"You don't even know her. She has a kid, and she eats more than I do. Who knows what else."

"Looks better than you do too," Peter smirked.

Carl glowered at him because no-one, except maybe Anna, looked better than him in this dump.

Peter leaned into the beige tiled wall and gazed sidelong at Carl, a gaze that made him fidgety, nervous, sweat prickling between his shoulderblades. It was the laser-like Sussing Things Out gaze.

"We're just mates, right?" Peter said so quietly that Carl nearly didn't hear it over the flushing of a urinal.

"Yeah. I believe so." Carl said, feeling relief and frustration swirl around in him.

"Just mates who sometimes . . ."

"Yeah."

"Good."

"Yeah."

A second pause in which Carl contemplated the Everlasting Blister on his foot and having to buy more ointment at the store for it, and Peter thought, I wonder if Lord Byron did his own hair or if they had stylists back then.

"Hey," Carl nudged Peter as he checked his watch.

"Hm?"

"I have 7 minutes. You wanna give me a blowjob?"

Peter pretended to contemplate this as a grave decision, like the women who contemplated nude or white when looking at panties.

"Ta!" he flicked the fag in the toilet and unzipped Carl's trousers.  


*

  
Why was he fucking Carl?

Peter was always the multi-tasking kind of bastard that everyone else was jealous of.

Yellow ticketing clearance items while making a count of things that needed to be brought from backstock? No problem. Do the jewelry counts faster than the jewelry supervisor ever dreamed in her three years of supervising and help customers with picking the perfect watch for grandpa? You bet. Folding men's dress shirts and organizing the ties by brand and color and pattern? Just say the word, gov, and Pete could do it. He was the only associate known to clean and organize the entire shoe department (stuff on the floor and in the shoes back stockroom) in a four hour shift. He also had an eye keener than Loss Prevention (one Drew, a gangly creature who seemed more interested in watching the video monitors in the back just to spy on people, wanking off or reading cheap grocery store novels, instead of catching thieves). Peter had sniffed out more scammers and thieves than any other associate in the store. People wondered how he happened to be so clever, but that was one of those things best left to speculation, considering. The only reason he hadn't been recognized by the company or promoted to a supervisor position was because he told the store manager, Alan, to go fuck himself on a regular basis when Alan told him to open more of the store charge card accounts, and he had made other associates cry on more than one occasion. He was a vicious bastard when he set his mind to it. Everyone liked him, but with those reservations that come with being a vicious bastard.

"Oh yes, he's nice, but don't ever cross him."

His personal life, like his work, was all multitask. Watch TV and run around the flat constructing some kind of sculpture and then take off to learn some guitar chords and then go next store to bother Steve and get plastered and/or high and then come back and finish watching TV and wondering what the hell he had been sculpting and finishing it as something else entirely.

Love was no different. Sometimes when sloshed he played the game with himself or Steve on how many lovers he could pack into his bed in one night. Fidelity? Passe. Monogamy? Laughable; an idea of the past. Idiots with their heads inflated with love prancing around saying "my" boyfriend and all that rubbish. He didn't fancy that ownership meant much freedom. It was like the stuff people bought at the store. They didn't buy gloves, for instance, because they liked their personalities or anything. They bought them to own them and because the gloves made them look and feel a certain way about who they were that didn't necessarily have much to do with the actual merchandise and more to do with the person who bought said merchandise. Peter thought the same thing about relationships, though, there were always exceptions.

Like Kate.

But then, he was on his knees in the men's bathroom giving Carl head with that ever so clever tongue of his. Holding the back of Carl's knees to keep him from falling and humming medleys as Carl tried not to be too loud.

He shouldn't have looked up, and he knew it, but he did and he felt something rip through him. Seeing Carl's face contorted in pleasure and knowing he had everything to do with it, the black hair falling his half-lidded eyes, the hisses of breath escaping his red lips.

He wanted to kiss him. Push him into the tiled wall and babble nonsense that meant nothing except he would say it to Carl and Carl would listen and that would mean something.

Wouldn't it?

Pete finished Carl up and buggered off right quick, muttering something about having to do jewelry counts again or something. Carl stood, blinking, breathing hard, puffing hair out of his face. His lower half was still pulsing with residual throbs (god that man was good with his mouth). Carl wondered what the flying fuck that was all about? He shuffled out of the stall and went to straighten his hair in the mirror. If Peter and he were actually involved, Carl might've even thought of it as rude on Peter's part. But then.


End file.
